A little cyber car show... Sporadically updated, Just A Car Geek is an old school blog that focuses on relatively inexpensive, unusual, rare and forgotten cars. Lots of opinions, links to cool and interesting sites, useless & useful trivia, cars for sale, news, a few stories and more... This is not your typical car blog...
Comments and submissions are welcomed and encouraged.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

1990 Volvo 240 - All of a sudden a lot of cool old Volvos are turning up.

This is a 49,000 mile car. It was purchased at an estate sale 2 years ago.

The seller says it has no rust and the "paint looks good with only a few very minor imperfections." He doesn't mention if it has a manual or automatic transmission, but states that the car "runs great, shifts smoothly." The "shifts smoothly" line makes me believe it's an automatic.

This is not the most exciting Volvo you can own, but with just 49,000 miles, it would be easy to get another 200K out of it. It would make a great commuter / everyday driver car.

1996 (?) ARO Spartana - Are you kidding me? An ARO Spartana in North America?

Quick history: ARO was a Romanian off-road vehicle manufacturer. In the late 1990s, a US citizen by the name of John Perez bought 68% of ARO and was going to sell the ARO 244 in the US under the name Cross Lander 244X. That never happened and things got ugly. The Romanian government alleged that Perez falsified documents in order to acquire the company and filed charges against him. Eventually ARO shut down operations (the Romanian government claims that Perez sold off all of ARO's assets) as did, obviously, Cross Lander.

But I digress...
The Spartana was never going to come to North America, so how this one got here is a mystery.

The Spartana is based on the ARO 10, the 244's baby brother. ARO started using the Spartana name in 1997. They built the vehicle until ARO's demise in 2006. It was available with gas and diesel engines, made by Renault, Daewoo, or Dacia.

This one apparently has the Renault 1.3 liter gas engine in it. That engine (at least in Renaults) produces about 54 HP, which I suspect makes this a pretty slow vehicle.

This is quite possibly one of the worst eBay ads I have ever seen. There is no information and just a few (older - 2012) pictures. Exercise due diligence before bidding on this vehicle.

This vehicle is not yet 25 years old. (The seller is listing it a 1996) It would be very difficult to bring into the US.

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